Prehistoric London...Mapped

Imagine herds of mammoths wandering across the slopes of Trafalgar Square, or woolly rhinos shuffling along the Thames foreshore. Thousands of years ago, the area we now know as London was inhabited by various species of large mammal, many now extinct. From time to time, remains of these megafauna are uncovered around town, most notably in Ilford, where numerous discoveries include an intact mammoth skull. We trawled through old newspaper archives to find accounts of such excavations, and have plotted them on the map above. We even found one story from 1921 reporting the discovery of much older diplodocus remains in Enfield, although this is highly likely to be a mis-attribution.

The map is (nowhere near) comprehensive, and our knowledge of the subject is only slight, but we offer the map as a curiosity piece and invite further additions and comments.